


Coping Together

by frozentreasure



Category: Boyfriends (Webcomic)
Genre: Food, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Sex, Intrusive Thoughts, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Multi, No Sex, Pet Names, Polyamory, Spending Your Way Out Of Problems, Trans Male Character, diner setting, doing your best
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:06:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28189677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frozentreasure/pseuds/frozentreasure
Summary: A short series of each Boyfriend feeling down and getting cheered up by their partners.—Communication is tricky, especially in a new relationship with three people. The Boys might be a bunch of gay disasters, but they’ve learned to recognise when one another is down, and they’ll do anything to bring each other back up when the going gets rough.
Relationships: Adrian (Nerd)/Vincent (Prep)/Felix (Goth)/Kevin (Jock), Felix (Goth)/Kevin (Jock), Vincent (Prep)/Adrian (Nerd)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 22





	Coping Together

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by comic creator refrainbow’s suggestion of Felix getting overwhelmed at how precious Adrian is and needing to be calmed down by Adrian. Since I love me some good, old-fashioned hurt/comfort, I expanded it into scenes of each of the four needing a bit of special attention from the group. 
> 
> Hope you like people trying their hardest to give emotional support and only partially failing at it! This is the first fic I’ve actually finished in years and years, even if it’s just the one chapter at the moment. I wrote this on my phone’s Notes app while in the hospital, so I’ll be giving it another pass when I have access to a real computer, but please let me know what you think!

For the longest time the other three truly thought Adrian just didn’t have a sad phase. Even at his lowest he would be outgoing, vocal, clear about his wants and needs, a bubbling fountain of confidence in the tiniest frame.

So one night, when Vince is sharing a bed with Adrian, he doesn’t pay much attention to a sudden burst of movement from his side, rousing him to vague consciousness in the middle of the night. Probably just Adrian going to the bathroom or grabbing a glass of water or something. 

But then he hears a sound he’s never heard before: a soft, scared, choked-out sob. “Vincent…?”

That doesn’t sound right. His eyes pull open to see his boyfriend, sweating and shaking like a frightened animal, eyes wide behind his pretty mop of pale blue hair. He’s almost crying.

Vince feels himself sit up without even thinking about it, like an otherworldly force moving through him. “Angel? What’s wrong?”

Before he even finishes getting the question out he feels Adrian’s full weight falling on him in a tight embrace.  _Damn_ , the boy is heavier than he looks. And now he really is crying. Vince feels a rush of…everything. Fear, confusion, anger, more. Partly wanting to know what’s happened, mostly wanting to fix it, no matter how much it would cost him.

But right now his angel isn’t making words or sentences, just soft sobs. “Hey, it’s okay,” Vince starts out, rubbing random patterns on Adrian’s back, slowly. “I’m here, I’m here.”

They’re like that for awhile. Vince could check exactly how long, but he doesn’t care. It’s long enough to calm Adrian down, that’s all that matters. Eventually, the smaller boy speaks.

“S-sorry, I just had—it was a bad dream, I mean a nightmare.” His words are still shaky. Vincent says nothing, giving Adrian room to continue at his own pace, but he does wonder to himself if this has ever happened before with the others.

“I thought… I thought I’d lost you. All of you. It felt so real this time.”  _This time_ . “And I just—I don’t want anything to happen to you.” His hold gets tighter, somehow. “Please don’t go? Don’t…please…”

Right then the very last thing Vince wants to do is let go. He’s worried he might start crying too, but he reminds himself that he needs to be strong for Adrian right now. It’s time for him to be the best, most supportive boyfriend he can be.

“It’s okay, I’m not going anywhere. Like you said, it was just a nightmare, it wasn’t real, hm?” He pulls back, just enough to look at Adrian’s face. Even through the shaking, the sweat clumping his hair awkwardly, the puffy red eyes, he looks beautiful. Vince blushes. Like always. He’s getting nervous now; what else should he say? Or do? He’s so used to getting cheered up, what would the others do? His mind races back to the last time Kevin did something that boosted his mood.

_But I can’t cook_ _,_ he realises. What about when he’d cuddle with Felix… and the Felix would—

_Yeah, probably not the right time for that._ Vince flails around in his head. Those two are so much better at comforting than him! Felix would be so much more secure when he holds you. And Kevin could say just the right things to cheer you up. All he does is just spend money at problems until they go away, but Adrian needs more than that right now.

And then it hits him.  _Wait, I don’t have to be more than me, I’ve got them to help!_ Still holding Adrian, back against his chest, he fumbles around for his phone. He checks the time. 2:18.  _ Not too late _ _,_ the others went on a solo date night earlier and were planning to stay at Kevin’s place for the night. He fires a message off in their group chat:

`come to mels rnrn`

`pls?`

`a is rly sad`

Without waiting for a confirmation, he puts the phone back down and focuses on the little nerd in front of him, still holding on like his life depends on it.

_ Or  my __life?_ Vince immediately cuts that kind of thought off and rubs Adrian’s cheek with his thumb, bringing his face up again. “Hey Angel, you wanna go somewhere?”

“Go…h-huh?” Adrian is clearly still removing himself from the dream, barely even processing the question. Vince puts on a smile, very proud of his impromptu plan, and gently pulls them both to the edge of the bed. He slowly disentangles the two of them, maintaining contact until they’re holding both hands with each other, before finally releasing to get dressed. He doesn’t miss the slight hitch in Adrian’s breath as he lets go.

Vince is a whirlwind as he effortlessly puts together a flawless outfit for a midnight excursion in just a few minutes. Meanwhile, Adrian has gotten a pair of shorts and shoes on over the top of his long “programmer socks”, a little confused at what’s happening but just following  his boyfriend’s lead. By the time he finishes the second shoe he looks up at Vincent, fully dressed, hair and makeup on point. “Ready?” the prep asks.

“I-I need to find a shirt, hold on…” Adrian says, scanning the room lit by hallway lights.

Vince dips out of sight and returns with a large bundle of white fabric. Adrian unfolds what he realises is one of Kevin’s jerseys.

“It’s a little big, but it’ll look perfect, trust me.”

It’s  _ way _ too big for him, but he still puts it on without complaint, now swimming in jacket and surrounded by the faint scent of the big boy himself. Vincent was right, he tells himself: the boy looks perfect for a nighttime trip to the diner.

After some gentle ushering out to the car, the two are cruising through the cool night air. Mel’s Diner isn’t far from the apartment, but just enough that walking would be too much of a commitment. Plus Kevin’s home is closer, so the timing ought to line up. Adrian’s hand finds his while driving and doesn’t let go. Another blush.

After a few minutes they pull up to the diner. One of the few establishments in town that is open 24 hours  and has good food to match, Mel’s is a favourite of many insomniac college students, and one of the boys’ regular haunts. Right now the place is nearly empty. Over in one corner, an unkempt middle-aged cab driver sipping coffee over a newspaper. Near the other end, what looks like a study group getting done last-minute cramming in, half asleep. Adrian curls up in a booth while Vince casually strolls up to the counter.

“Hey cutie, what’ll it be?” the waiter asks. They were politely turned down by the boys pretty quickly, but Vince knew they still liked to be a little flirty with everyone. It made conversation easier, that’s for sure.

“Hey, I’m gonna need the most overloaded ice cream sundae you’ve got.” He throws a half-glance over his shoulder to the booth. “Someone needs cheering up, if ya get me.”

The waiter nods seriously. “You got it, chief, we’ll take care of it. Extra nuts, extra hot fudge, extra ice cream?”

“Extra everything, something no one can finish on their own,” Vincent confirms, flashing his credit card to make it clear: he’s not sparing any expense tonight.

The waiter finishes scrawling on a pad and throws a mini-salute before tearing the sheet of paper to pass to the kitchen. “Leave it to us!”

Satisfied, Vince joins Adrian at the booth. The smaller boy is observing the restaurant through the window reflection quietly. He doesn’t seem to be shaking anymore, but he’s still not his normal self.

Vince gently lays a hand on his shoulder. Even after all this, he hadn’t thought of what to say next, and the others aren’t here yet. “Do you…do you want to talk about it? You don’t have to!” he adds quickly, “Just, if you want to, y’know? I’m always here.”

It takes a minute to get started. Turns out, by now, the exact details have faded away. But the memory remains. The feeling of your lovers being ripped away from you, of being abandoned. That’s the feeling that is still stuck with Adrian, as Vince finds out. And the fear of it happening again, happening in the real world, being just as powerless to stop it. Vincent listens to it all spilling out, while his heart aches more and more. 

As it goes on he realises he’s heard something like this before. Way back, as teens, he recalls Felix explaining something like this when he’d missed a date.  _Wait a second, that was a date, wasn’t it?! We were totally going to have a date and I was completely oblivious! Argh—No, wait, not the time. What did he say? Think…_

Finally, when Adrian winds down, Vince takes a swing at it. “I’m not great at this, but it sounds like you’re kinda having intrusive thoughts, right? Like, something negative just got stuck in your head, totally at random. And you can’t work out why, but it’s all you can focus on, and it just starts to feel more and more real.” Adrian has started nodding along, and Vince gets a breath of energy, he’s totally not screwing this up!

He continues. “So I think a thing you can do is, uh, just, y’know, acknowledge it? Like, you have a super bad thought. And you look at it and you go ‘that’s real fucked up!’ You go ‘I know that’s not a normal thought, but I definitely just thought it. So I’m gonna move on for now, and I’m gonna come back to it later to work out what made me think it.’ And then if you can’t find a reason why then you know you don’t have any reason to worry about it, so you get better at ignoring it if it comes up again.”

“What do you do if you know why you thought it?” Adrian asks, sounding a little more like himself. Curious, wanting to know more, although still a bit rattled.

Vince opens his mouth before his brain catches up. “You—uhhh…” Good question. How did the rest of it go?! Was there a rest of it? Why did they only ever talk about this once? “Uwaa, I’m sorry, I don’t remember! Felix is better at this than me, I don’t really know it personally. But we can ask him later? I’d like to know more about it too, so I can help if it happens again.”

Adrian nods, more firmly than before, a slight smile on his face as he shows off some of his usual confidence. “I’d like that!” he says. “Maybe if we take some time talking about mental health we can be ready if something happens in future.”

Vince blushes without realising, a fresh burst of warmth in his chest as he sees one of his top three favourite people feeling better again.

Adrian keeps going without even noticing, starting to ramble, like he does when he’s worked something important out.

“And even if I don’t have the answers now, I don’t have to. I can figure it out another time. When I can think clearly.”

Vince nods, and notices movement out of the corner of his eye. “Exactly,” he says,” we can work on it together, later. But right now we can think of positive things. Like how good this is gonna taste.”

A moment later the dish is set down in front of the two of them.  _Well_ ,  he thinks.  _ It sure isn’t getting finished by just one of us. _

Even as they look the monstrosity up close they can barely tell where one scoop of ice cream ends and the next one begins. It isn’t so high it might topple over, but it looks like the chef has compressed as much food into each cubic centimetre as humanly possible, then aimed fire hoses of all kinds of fudge sauce across the thing. They’ve even managed to make a copious layer of nuts look artful, tasteful, like it was just lightly dusted on top. Compared to how much of everything else was there it might as well be a light dusting and nothing more. It must be the sundae to end all sundaes.

While Vince marvels at the product of a clearly bored late-night kitchen and tries to guess whether it’s bigger than him or not, Adrian exclaims: “V-Vincent! You ordered this?”

“Well yeah, you were looking like you needed a pick-me-up.”

“I thought we’d be getting a coffee or something. This thing might try to eat me! I can’t eat all of this.”

Vince nearly laughs at how different Adrian is behaving with a new object of focus before him. “Of course not, that’s why there are two spoons.”

“F _our _ spoons,” someone corrects him.

“Sorry,  _ four _ spoons,” he corrects himself. Then he does a double take.  _ Four spoons?  _ Yes, there’s an extra pair of spoons stuck into the sundae, which was definitely not a part of the order.  _ Oh, they are  good_ _,_ he thinks, shooting a glance over to the counter, where the waiter is trying to pretend not to be watching the four. 

Then Vince does  _ another _ double take as he realises their other two boyfriends have arrived, and Felix has already taken a spoonful of the dessert into his mouth. He gives a simple wave.

“Hey hot stuffs.” Kevin greets them casually, leaning in for a quick kiss from Vince.

“Guys!” Vince starts an awkward shuffle-climb onto the other side of Adrian to put him at the window and let the others join on the same side, keeping Adrian in the middle.

“Pumpkin, Kevvy?” Adrian blinks, then turns to Vince, now by the window. “You called them here as well, this late?”

“You needed a pick-me-up,” Vincent explains again. As if on cue, Kevin hoists the smallest boy up and slides in to the booth, dropping him back down in between his spread legs. When Felix closes in on Kevin’s other side, it feels like they’re all bundled up for a movie night at home. Adrian’s favourite way to be close to all of them at once.

_ Or maybe second favourite, _ Vince thinks, noting a key difference between being at home and in public.

“You doin’ okay, cupcake?” Kevin’s voice is a warm, soft rumble when he’s wrapped around like that.

“Hey Doll,” says Felix, petting Adrian’s head and giving him a kiss on the forehead. “We’re here for you. All of us. We can talk about whatever you want, okay?”

Adrian pauses to himself for a bit. “Yeah…it was some…bad thoughts. But we can talk about it later. Together?” he asks, glancing at each of their faces. Each of them gives an understanding nod.

Felix adds, “Well, if we’re gonna talk about something else for now, how about this **Death By Sugar** we’ve been treated to?” He dips his spoon back into the ice cream, smirking at Vince.

“I had no idea it would be this big, for the record,” Vince retorts, now reaching for a spoon of his own to begin attacking Mount Sundae.

Kev reaches over Adrian to grab one of the remaining spoons. “No complaints here, I can use a cheat day.”

“W-wait!” Adrian exclaims, nervously looking around at the three of them, “Are we really doing this? It’s almost three-o’clock! There’s no way we’ll get to our lectures tomorrow if we go through the whole thing.”

“I bet you’re already ahead though, right?”  
“I’ve just got practice in the afternoon.”  
“I don’t mind skipping and studying with you at home.”

Vince smiles. He knows Adrian wasn’t ready for all three of them to respond right away. But what else would they do? Of course they’d do this to help make him feel better, consequences be damned. Seeing this, Adrian sighs with a smile and pulls the last spoon out of the tower and digs in.

Immediately his eyes light up. “Mmm! It’sh sho goo’!” He swallows, then turns to Vince, eyes watery, but the rest of his face bright as day. He’s seen this face plenty of times before, and it’s always a good sign. “Thank you so much, sweetie! For all of this.”

Vince feels himself being pulled in by his collar for a kiss. He knows he’s being watched by his other partners. He knows their table’s being watched by the waiter, not even trying to hide their swooning for everything working out. He knows he’s blushing. In 10 hours he’s probably going to feel like garbage. But when he looks at those three perfect boys before him, he knows he’d do it all again in a heartbeat. Just like they would for him.

**Author's Note:**

> Do sundaes normally have banana/other fruits and stuff in them? I wasn’t sure if that’s considered a different food item at that point, diner culture doesn’t really exist in my town. Anyway they all get carried away towards the end and order pancakes to go and the waiter sobs to the chef at how perfect they are.
> 
> -ft


End file.
